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Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

arstechnica.com

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Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#161

Post by ineedasername »

dylan604 wrote: post #106
newacct583 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the article, it's already been tested and works. Just throw a sprinkler on the thing. Clearly, though, the tolerances weren't chosen correctly when they designed the thing. 122F isn't actually that hot for a device designed to sit stationary in the sun all day.

> Just throw a sprinkler on the thing. Yeah, that's a brilliant plan for a part of the world that is severely restricted on water usage and is routinely in drought conditions.

Mount it in a kiddie pool with a pump to reclaim the water. Starlink can sell it as a package deal: dish, pool, pump Extreme Weather package. Complete with puncture repair kit for the pool.

Of course there's still evaporation, so you just station a half dozen condensing dehumidifiers around the pool to capture as much as you can in the immediate area and feed it back into the system.

And there you go: For just a few $thousand in supplemental equipment you get cheap broadband.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#162

Post by andrewmcwatters »

cortesoft wrote: post #156
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #6

I’m always surprised how poor engineering gets exposed in products I purchase being an Arizona resident. No, failing at 122F is not acceptable. If your hardware is exposed to outside conditions, it should operate easily below 32F, and well above 140F. Considering that phones can operate below 0F and near 122F, that’s embarrassingly bad. Same thing in vehicles. If you’re driving consistently at interstate speeds, you…

> No, failing at 122F is not acceptable I don't think it is a simple as saying that. If, for example, it cost twice as much to design something that works up to 140 as it does to make it work up to 122, I don't think it makes sense to make everyone in the world pay twice as much for something they don't need. You should sell a more expensive version that works up to 140.

There's a cost to building multiple SKUs. Also you massively overestimate the cost of materials for withstanding such temperatures.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#163

Post by andrewmcwatters »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #153
goodcanadian wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian, 32F seems like an oddly high lower limit to me. Things should operate down to at least -40.

Assuming you can keep something in the shade - does anywhere on Earth get to 140F beside inside forest fires, lightning bolts and volcanoes? There is a substantial portion of the worlds population that lives months at a time where temperatures are regularly well below freezing.

Pavement.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#164

Post by ultrarunner »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #140
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #29

Sort of funny that the solution for streaming is to literally turn on a stream of water. On a separate note, even if you don’t live in Arizona, a litmus test for good engineering is whether or not you see reviews of a product melting in Arizona. Yeah, melt. Literally. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the US. If it doesn’t work here, it’s not mass market.

The Phoenix area is really only has a metropolitan statistical area rank of 10 so it's about the size of Atlanta or the Boston area in terms of population. By GDP it's only 16 which is lower than the Detroit area. It is a lot of people but it's not even close to being #4 once you account for desert cities being physically larger due to geography and political needs. That said, SpaceX/Elon should not have sold the pro…

Maybe I'm missing something, but it has a large population and is physically larger, thus it is less significant?

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#165

Post by daniellarusso »

digikata wrote: post #121

I’ve worked on multiple projects where, at the early prototype stage, we limped along with off the shelf generic heatsinks, or even no heatsinks, for a phase or two because for some reason, it was long lead or high expense or low priority to fit a custom high performance heatsink. It sometimes seems like thermal work is as eschewed by electronic engineers as mechanical engineers often avoid HVAC.

I have always had a bizarre fascination with refrigeration engineering.

It is amazing all the things this has enabled for humanity.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#166

Post by failwhaleshark »

It should work at an extension of military temperature ranges for global use indoors, outdoors, and in odd semi-indoor scenarios like the back of a hot truck: -75 to +125 C / -103 F to 257 F.

Treating it as retail consumer electronics shit isn't rugged enough for real use.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#167

Post by hnick »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #6

I’m always surprised how poor engineering gets exposed in products I purchase being an Arizona resident. No, failing at 122F is not acceptable. If your hardware is exposed to outside conditions, it should operate easily below 32F, and well above 140F. Considering that phones can operate below 0F and near 122F, that’s embarrassingly bad. Same thing in vehicles. If you’re driving consistently at interstate speeds, you…

Do air conditioners need special handling over there? When we got ours serviced the guy told me that in Western Sydney the split systems sometimes shut down on the worst days when you need them due to heat in direct sunlight. You need shade, but even then some had sprinkler/misting systems for the hotter days.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#168

Post by lakis »

tdeck wrote: post #132
smegger001 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really Homo Sapians originated in the hot environs of Sub-Saharan Africa. Most early civilizations were in deserts, like Mesopotamia and Egypt. Their have been cities in deserts longer then there have been temperate climate cities. Humans are built for hot climates we just don't like them.

Mesopotamia and Egypt weren't deserts when those early civilizations got started.

Yes they were. They had rivers running through them. Civilization sprung next to the river.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#169

Post by LeoPanthera »

ineedasername wrote: post #150

This can't be a new problem, how do companies like Direct TV handle this? More robust equipment?

Receive-only dishes are usually just a curved piece of metal with a fairly dumb LNB mounted on an arm. The Starlink "dish" isn't a traditional parabolic reflector, it is a phased array antenna with electronics under the surface.

Re: Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

#170

Post by new_realist »

blhack wrote: post #154

Starlink is in beta. The entire purpose of the beta is to find stuff like this. They found something, and I'm sure that the next iteration of this before it goes to mass market will account for it. You're just seeing the system work.

This flaw was known to SpaceX before the beta began; SpaceX has publicly said the dishes are only certified to 104° Fahrenheit. Musk prefers to ship known broken products in the name of velocity, and out of a sociopathic contempt for the consumer. It’s happened to me more than once.
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